20th-century french non-fiction writers

Marcel Proust

French novelist, critic, and essayist who wrote the monumental novel In Search of Lost Time , originally published in French in seven volumes between 1913 and 1927. He is considered by critics and writers to be one of the most influential authors of the 20th century.

Claude Levi-Strauss

French anthropologist and ethnologist whose work was key in the development of the theories of structuralism and structural anthropology

Milan Kundera

Czech writer who went into exile in France in 1975, becoming a naturalised French citizen in 1981. Kundera’s Czechoslovak citizenship was revoked in 1979; he received his Czech citizenship in 2019. He “sees himself as a French writer and insists his work should be studied as French literature and classified as such in book stores”.Kundera’s best-known work is The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Simone de Beauvoir

French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, socialist, and social theorist